Private Markets, Angel and Secondary Investing, Sacra

Sacra

Private Markets, Angel and Secondary Investing

Bringing transparency to private markets so investors, founders, and employees can build on conviction. Sacra delivers deeply researched insights on the private companies shaping tomorrow's markets. By surfacing the data, context, and operator perspective that are missing from private markets today, we help secondary buyers and sellers price equity accurately and unlock liquidity for the people building these businesses.

Private Capital Markets

<ul><li>Stan hit $14.7M of annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of 2023, up 765% year-over-year, as store-in-bio replaced link-in-bio as the default home base of the online creator.</li><li>Stan grew revenue a whopping 765% in 2023 by giving affiliates 20% of all revenue generated from their links into perpetuity, seeding a cottage industry of TikTok Stan influencers.</li><li>Gross churn is high at 13% monthly and Stan is living with the continued risk of being banned by TikTok, which recently sunset its integration with Shopify and will reportedly ban Amazon links-in-bio next.</li></ul>

Stan hit $14.7M of annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of 2023, up 765% year-over-year, as store-in-bio replaced link-in-bio as the default home base of the online creator.Stan grew revenue a whopping 765% in 2023 by giving affiliates 20% of all revenue generated from their links into perpetuity, seeding a cottage industry of TikTok Stan influencers.Gross churn is high at 13% monthly and Stan is living with the continued risk of being banned by TikTok, which recently sunset its integration with Shopify and will reportedly ban Amazon links-in-bio next.

<ul><li>On the flip side, pure subscription SaaS companies like ConvertKit ($9-25/month) and Beehiiv ($42-84/month) with a simple model of charging a fixed monthly fee based on list size hit $38M annual recurring revenue (ARR) on zero capital raised (ConvertKit) and $3M ARR on $4.2M raised (Beehiiv).</li><li>After having dipped to 3% year-over-year growth in October 2021, ConvertKit’s growth re-accelerated to 22% last month with the ad network launches of Creator Network, which lets writers do both free and paid recommendations of other newsletters, and Sponsor Network, which lets businesses sponsor writers.</li><li>Businesses are the biggest tailwind for the creator economy now—while corporate spend on social ads is down 6x since 2020, spending on influencer marketing in 2023 hit $5.1B just through Q3, up 82% from $2.8B in 2020.</li></ul>

On the flip side, pure subscription SaaS companies like ConvertKit ($9-25/month) and Beehiiv ($42-84/month) with a simple model of charging a fixed monthly fee based on list size hit $38M annual recurring revenue (ARR) on zero capital raised (ConvertKit) and $3M ARR on $4.2M raised (Beehiiv).After having dipped to 3% year-over-year growth in October 2021, ConvertKit’s growth re-accelerated to 22% last month with the ad network launches of Creator Network, which lets writers do both free and paid recommendations of other newsletters, and Sponsor Network, which lets businesses sponsor writers.Businesses are the biggest tailwind for the creator economy now—while corporate spend on social ads is down 6x since 2020, spending on influencer marketing in 2023 hit $5.1B just through Q3, up 82% from $2.8B in 2020.

<ul><li>Today, the bootstrapped ConvertKit (valued at $200M) is at $33.5M in ARR growing 15% year-over-year.</li><li>VC funding for creator startups fell to $123M in Q1’23, marking 7 straight quarters of decline since the peak at $1.7B in Q2’21.</li><li>In the near term, the creator economy’s cultural influence has outpaced its GDP—in the long term, the networks that have begun to form at ConvertKit (connecting creators with Creator Network), Beehiiv (connecting creators to advertisers with Ad Network) and Substack (connecting readers and creators with Reader and Notes) are pulling adjacent, distribution-constrained SMBs into the ecosystem, whether they call themselves creators or not.</li></ul>

Today, the bootstrapped ConvertKit (valued at $200M) is at $33.5M in ARR growing 15% year-over-year.VC funding for creator startups fell to $123M in Q1’23, marking 7 straight quarters of decline since the peak at $1.7B in Q2’21.In the near term, the creator economy’s cultural influence has outpaced its GDP—in the long term, the networks that have begun to form at ConvertKit (connecting creators with Creator Network), Beehiiv (connecting creators to advertisers with Ad Network) and Substack (connecting readers and creators with Reader and Notes) are pulling adjacent, distribution-constrained SMBs into the ecosystem, whether they call themselves creators or not.

<ul><li>Substack (2017) built “Svbtle with a paywall”, paying advances to prominent writers like Matthew Yglesias (ex-Vox) and Anne Helen Petersen (ex-Buzzfeed) to create a halo around its brand combined with a business model that enabled them to index on the upside of its big-name writers and focus on quality over mass market.</li><li>Sacra estimates that revenue at Substack grew 58% year-over-year to $19M in 2022 off of 35 million subscribers, 2 million paid subscribers and $145M million in GMV with $82 million in funding raised.</li><li>In March 2023, Substack launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on WeFunder to raise $5M at a $585M pre-money valuation and estimated 30x multiple on $19M in TTM revenue, a flat round from their 2021 Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz where they raised $65M at a 102x multiple.</li></ul>

Substack (2017) built “Svbtle with a paywall”, paying advances to prominent writers like Matthew Yglesias (ex-Vox) and Anne Helen Petersen (ex-Buzzfeed) to create a halo around its brand combined with a business model that enabled them to index on the upside of its big-name writers and focus on quality over mass market.Sacra estimates that revenue at Substack grew 58% year-over-year to $19M in 2022 off of 35 million subscribers, 2 million paid subscribers and $145M million in GMV with $82 million in funding raised.In March 2023, Substack launched an equity crowdfunding campaign on WeFunder to raise $5M at a $585M pre-money valuation and estimated 30x multiple on $19M in TTM revenue, a flat round from their 2021 Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz where they raised $65M at a 102x multiple.

<ul><li>Link-in-bio companies like Linktree and Beacons reinvented About.me for Gen Z as a website generator that lets you route traffic from super-platforms like Instagram and TikTok to your content and sources of income.</li><li>Linktree ended 2021 with 24M users and $26M ARR—today, they’re at around $33M ARR with ~31M users, growing 29% YoY.</li><li>Link-in-bio sits at the strategic position where creators route traffic off platform onto an owned property which gives it the opportunity to capture traffic, de-anonymize traffic and monetize traffic.</li></ul>

Link-in-bio companies like Linktree and Beacons reinvented About.me for Gen Z as a website generator that lets you route traffic from super-platforms like Instagram and TikTok to your content and sources of income.Linktree ended 2021 with 24M users and $26M ARR—today, they’re at around $33M ARR with ~31M users, growing 29% YoY.Link-in-bio sits at the strategic position where creators route traffic off platform onto an owned property which gives it the opportunity to capture traffic, de-anonymize traffic and monetize traffic.

Linktree: The $33M ARR About.Me For Gen Z

United States

Mobile website builder for creators to sell products, collect tips, and manage fans

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Beacons (BEACONS US)

Stan: The $14.7M/year store-in-bio

TL;DR: Stan hit $14.7M of annual recurring revenue (ARR) at the end of 2023, up 765% year-over-year, as store-in-bio replaced link-in-bio as the...

Sacra

ConvertKit At $38M ARR

TL;DR: Subscription SaaS creator economy companies like ConvertKit and Beehiiv with simple business models are growing through the creator...

Sacra

ConvertKit Vs. Beehiiv Vs. Substack

TL;DR: Beehiiv just announced a $12.5M Series A to go after Substack as they and ConvertKit all battle it out to build the best, most monetizable...

Sacra

Substack: The $19M/year Content LVMH

Substack grew revenue an estimated 10x during COVID and built a star-studded roster of writers. Now, it faces growing tensions between building for...

Sacra

Linktree: The $33M ARR About.Me For Gen Z

Link-in-bio companies found initial product-market fit as a demilitarized zone (DMZ) that created a buffer between authoritarian, puritanical...

Sacra

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